I unexpectedly had a terrific chat with Lisa Kudrow during the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour, and turned that into this Adweek profile about The Comeback’s return on Sunday, nine years after HBO canceled it. She talked with me about playing both sides of the HBO/Showtime rivalry, reviving The Comeback, how her guest-appearance on Scandal last season helped make it happen and what’s next for Valerie Cherish.

Lisa Kudrow is Feeling the Pressure to Make Her Comeback Worth the 9-Year Wait

The post Lisa Kudrow is Feeling the Pressure to Make Her ‘Comeback’ Worth the 9-Year Wait appeared first on TV & Not TV.

Most of the reporters on hand for TCA summer press tour are counting the days until The Comeback’s return in November. Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King talked to us about Valerie Cherish’s triumphant return. As I wrote at Quartz,

While Kudrow and her co-creator Michael Patrick King had talked casually over the years about what Valerie might be up to now, “it was too much of an emotional risk” to think seriously about the idea, Kudrow said at the Television Critics Association summer press tour. That changed when HBO called them in, after two network staffers persuaded HBO programming president Michael Lombardo to consider reviving it. “It just started with a kernel of a creative idea,” said Lombardo. “We started imagining it, and we called Michael Patrick King and Lisa. They came in for a meeting and it was so exciting, funny and it just happened.”

They, and HBO execs, also talked about how much reality TV — and HBO — has changed in the nine years since The Comeback went off the air, and what could be next for the show.

How ‘The Comeback’ came back

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